I had a ConfigMgr 2007 installation where the DB was placed on a SQL cluster.

ConfigMgr was configured to do a backup every night but it failed every time.

A look in the backup log showed the following error:

Info: Sending message to start the SQL Backup…
Couldn’t connect to \\SQLcluster registry
STATMSG: ID=5049 SEV=E LEV=M SOURCE=”SMS Server” COMP=”SMS_SITE_BACKUP” SYS=SCCMserver SITE=LHT PID=3400 TID=924 GMTDATE=Wed Jan 23 19:21:16.539 2008 ISTR0=”" ISTR1=”" ISTR2=”" ISTR3=”" ISTR4=”" ISTR5=”" ISTR6=”" ISTR7=”" ISTR8=”" ISTR9=”" NUMATTRS=0
Error: Failed to send start message to the SqlBackup.

A search on Google showed that others had the same problem. But the solution mentioned here setting up a missing Kerberos authentication on the SQL cluster was not the problem in my installation.

Instead I found the solution in this even though the problem description is not the same as the problem I got.

But never the less adding the following registry value on both of the SQL cluster nodes solved the problem:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters, we should normally have the key:

Name: NoRemapPipes

Type: REG_MULTI_SZ

Data: winreg svcctl eventlog

After the registry key value was added to both cluster nodes the backup started to work.

Thomas